When it comes to building your wealth, many of us have a variety of options we would love to try out. For those with a bit of financial fluidity to their name, getting into the world of real estate can sure sound enjoyable. Buy up an old building that needs work, slowly do it up, rent it out, use that to take on another building…so on, so forth. However, as we all know, real estate isn’t quite as simple as that!

Here are just some of the major things to consider before diving in.

The Good

• The major positive of running your own property portfolio is the return on investment. Most of the time, having even just 2-3 properties could help you pay for the next properties and see a nice profit on top. With the right decisions made, having a property portfolio can become very lucrative in a rather short space of time.

• Also, you can use it to help make your tax investments a little cheaper. Depending on where you live and what tax band you fall under, you can see some pretty wild tax write-offs which can mean you are putting your own money to make yourself more successful in the future, rather than seeing it vanish.

• Another key benefit of being involved in the housing market is the fact that it’s one of the few markets always in demand. People need somewhere to live – it’s like food and getting your hair cut; they are industries that due to the specialized nature of the service and the fact they are essential to personal happiness/hygiene, that people will always need them. Buy the right property at the right price, and you’ll never be stuck with a bad investment!

The Bad

• However, on the flip side, you can find yourself struggling if you pick even just one bad tenant. If they make a mess of the place and/or vanish overnight, you are left footing a bill you perhaps cannot afford until you hear from them once again – hardly ideal, is it? Keep that in mind before you make any investments. You need to be good at choosing people alongside everything else.

• Another major issues is unforeseen circumstance. This can be a major issue and leave you with a significant issue to clean up – from problems with the walls to the housing marketing falling into disrepair, all manner of issues could stop your investment working out quite as you had planned.

• Lastly, you need to look at things from the building point of view. If you cannot do each task needed to get the property into shape yourself, you need to hire someone who can. If you hire the wrong person, it can leave you with an expensive job to repair and a very unhappy tenant!

Consider the above and then you might feel more comfortable about making a jump into the property market. Until you do, though, don’t make any investments.